How Labour governed, 1945-1951

A pamphlet by the Syndicalist Workers' Federation on how the Labour Party governed between the years 1945 and 1951 examining their relationship with the working class and how "socialist" it really was.

“I look around my colleagues and I see landlords, capitalists and lawyers. We are a cross-section of the national life and this is something that has never happened before.”Arthur Greenwood, Labour Lord Privy Seal, Hansard, August 17, 1945.

Atomic insanity
THE war in Europe ended on May 5, 1945. As a result of the General Election that followed, the Labour Government took office on July 26, 1945. Eleven days later, on August 6, the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The second atom bomb devastated Nagasaki on August 9. The total casualties from these two insane acts will never be known, but the death roll was certainly upwards of half-a-million and, eighteen years later, victims are still dying from radiation sickness. The dropping of these bombs was not solely an act of American policy. President Truman has stated that he obtained the agreement of the British Government before the mass-murder was committed and the Labour Government had observers, including Group-Captain Cheshire and nuclear scientist Sir William Penney, at the bomb-dropping.

“The first task of the Labour Government was to complete the winning of the war against Japan and the general anticipation had been that this might prove to be a long and difficult one ... but the use of the atom bomb at Hiroshima brought the war to a sudden end. It was, of course, an immense relief.”
Clement Attlee, As It Happened, p. 150.

Japan surrendered on August 15, but not all the Allied leaders agree with Attlee’s cold-blooded justification of the use of the atom bomb. Rear-Admiral Zacharias, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, USA, writing in the American publication Look, asserts: “Japan would have surrendered by August 15, 1945, without the use of extreme measures.”

Admiral Zacharias broadcast on July 21, 1945, offering Japan the chance to surrender unconditionally. Tokyo’s answer was, he says, “in effect an open invitation to begin surrender negotiations on the terms we had proposed.”

Later, because of the work of spies in Britain, the USA withheld atom bomb information and the Labour Government began work on its own atom and hydrogen bombs. Before this was completed, the Tories had displaced the Labour Party and it was Churchill’s task to announce the success of Britain’s own bomb, though he graciously admitted that his Government had only plucked the fruit from thee tree planted by another:

“All those concerned in the production of the first British atomic bomb are to be warmly congratulated on the successful outcome of an historic episode and I should no doubt pay my compliments to the Leader of the Opposition and the party opposite for initiating it.”Churchill in the House of Commons, Hansard, Oct. 24, 1952.

And Attlee, from the Labour benches, bowed and smiled his thanks for the compliment.

We believe many sincere but starry-eyed Labour supporters have already forgotten these events during those six years in which every Socialist principle was betrayed by the politicians. Before they were lost completely, we felt it essential to place these facts on record.

Syndicalist Workers' Federation

Attached files

Comments

Steven.

Aug 4 2012 12:51

Thanks for posting this. I read a paper copy of it a few years ago and it's really good and eye opening, especially for anyone that had any faith in "old labour", when it was still supposedly socialist

an item has been put forth in SF internal bulletin to discuss these SWF pamphlets and whether there is internal interest in republishing. i will not be releasing the OCR of this text quite yet, but will wait until this discussion has come to fruition (or lack thereof).

i would appreciate it if others could wait until this point before OCR'ing any other SWF pamphlets, or consider PM'ing me.

Clement Atlee (and Bevan etc.) did what he did due to the social pressures of the time. Workers could successfully leverage and block the flow of capital on a national level over political issues at that time, plus Britain needed a healthy workforce to rebuild British capitalism. If you look at the strike waves ('Winter of discontent') that broke out over Callaghan's continuation of the wage freeze policy into a 5th year (later in the 70s), this policy was successfully defeated by the working population.

The Conservative Party would have more or less been forced to implement the approximately the same policies had they won the 1945 general election.

The difference is that Labour and Atlee (incidentally a comfortable member of the upper middle classes and very proud of his public* school education) ideologically believed in the policies - the Tory party only did so in order to win power.

A famous point is that the Conservative Party delivered more social housing in their first period of office after WW2 than Labour were able to.

Atlee was not furthering the goals of worker control, but implementing the necessary changes to ensure the continued survival of the British economy and nation. Hence i believe it is fair for libertarian communists to completely crap over his legacy.

*in england 'public school' refers to paid private schools, and not to state funded schools.

...The government came down hard on the London squatting, refusing to provide services, and had the police lay siege to the blocks, in the full glare of media publicity. The Labour leaders were certainly shaken by this development. According to Michael Foot, ministers feared ´direct action spreading like a prairie fire´. Bevan met the London Trades Council and told them he had some sympathy - but for the homeless, and not for the squatters. His paper Tribune carried the front page headline ´Help yourself to a leg of lamb!´, venomously comparing the squatters to common thieves, and even to Mosley´s fascists. Others in the cabinet wanted the squatters placed at the bottom of the housing list, and the concern of one minister was ‘want to tell my caretakers what in law they can do about squatters, after High Court decision’. 3 The Communists brought the London squatting to an end after ten days. The squatters were offered new, decent alternative housing, but they were double-crossed, and were housed temporarily in the dormitories of the former Bromley-by-Bow workhouse. Their crime, it was spelled out, was against the all-important waiting list...

It seems some time since the posts here about SF republishing this. What was the outcome of these discussions? I think that, if not a direct reprint, a pamphlet heavily quoting from this and combining with a few other sources and a critique of other elements of Loach's Spirit of 45 look at this period would be really useful/valuable at the moment, and potentially for some time to come.

There wasn't any interest in republishing them, one person who did get back to me thought it would be better to spend effort on producing more organising focused materials, which I agree with. I am no longer a member of SF, however i am still sitting on a semi-finished layout and the OCR'ed and proof read text, and come next week, I finally have a break from studying. By that point i will either complete a PDF reprint, or just post up the OCR'ed text on here.

I am very interested in re-formatting this, new cover, intro etc etc... and having it printed back into pamphlet form... Perhaps with an extra section with other information from this period (done a lot of reading around the 45-51 gov, recently)... Does anyone know if there are any copyright issues, or whether any individuals or groups would have any objection to me doing this?

Does anyone know who did the nice new PDF version of this? Was re-reading it and remembered how excellent it was. Would be great if the if we could have a text version of the new PDF one up here. Does whoever put it together still have a text version available?

Recently the Libcom twitter account did a really good thread on all the shitty things the Labour Party has done in it's history. It would be really good if someone could post it up here as a blog/article?

Recently the Libcom twitter account did a really good thread on all the shitty things the Labour Party has done in it's history. It would be really good if someone could post it up here as a blog/article?

yeah that was Mike Harman mostly, I've asked him to post it up here as well but not sure he's had time

Info

The libcom library contains nearly 20,000 articles. If it's your first time on the site, or you're looking for something specific, it can be difficult to know where to start. Luckily, there's a range of ways you can filter the library content to suit your needs, from casual browsing to researching a particular topic. Click here for the guide.

Log in for more features

▶ Can comment on articles and discussions
▶ Get 'recent posts' refreshed more regularly
▶ Bookmark articles to your own reading list
▶ Use the site private messaging system
▶ Start forum discussions, submit articles, and more...